Archive for the 'Newslinks' Category

The Art Production Fund has launched another collaboration with luxury retailer Barney’s in an effort to raise funds for additional public arts projects. Launching May 1st, the collaboration will feature a series of products with designs and illustrations by Alex Katz. “Working with Alex is a dream come true,” says PF co-founder Doreen Remen. “His work has long been influenced by pop culture imagery, and he’s passionate about getting his work out there to be enjoyed by everyone. Alex is the quintessential New Yorker and Barneys is such an iconic New York retailer, so the pairing was irresistible.” (more…)

M+, the Museum of Visual Culture, set to open in Hong Kong in 2017, will aim to serve as Asia’s counterpoint to institutions such as the Centre Pompidou or the Guggenheim Bilbao. Tapping Lars Nittve, formerly of the Tate Modern, as executive director, M+ will be the cornerstone of a $2.8 billion government-backed undertaking that hopes to “raise the bar for Asian museums” and cement Hong Kong’s position on the international art map.

Jeffrey Deitch defends the art-historical significance of the exhibitions he’s staged as director of Los Angeles MOCA amid recent criticism that he caters too strongly to a commercial audience. “What we’re doing here now, it’s on the most serious level,” says Deitch, “It’s as good as any museum in the country.”

Celebrated painter Cy Twombly died today at the age of 83. Twombly passed away from cancer in Rome, where he has been living since 1957. Known as somewhat of a recluse, Twombly usually did not write about his work or give interviews. One of the exceptions to this was made in 2008 when Twombly spoke to Nick Serota, director of the Tate. “I had my freedom and that was nice,” he said.

Born Edwin Parker Twombly, Jr. in 1928 in Lexington, Virginia, and nicknamed “Cy” by his father, the artist was known for his calligraphic style. Writer, critic and assistant professor at the San Francisco Art Institute Claire Daigle writes, “Twombly arrived in Manhattan in 1950 while the New York School painting of Pollock and de Kooning was in full swing. Upon Robert Rauschenberg’s encouragement, Twombly joined him for the 1951–1952 sessions at Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina – a liberal refuge [staffed by] influential teachers present at this time [such as] Charles Olson, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and John Cage.” In 2001, Twombly won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale.

Jean-Baptise-Camille Corot, Portrait of a Girl, 1857-8, which went missing on June 29, 2010 and was recovered weeks later. Image courtesy of the New York Times.

What began as a summer comedy of errors – an Upper East Side doorman finds a Corot painting missing on a courier’s drunken bender – took a strange turn earlier this month when the painting’s owner realized its co-owner may have been involved in its disappearance. The following is a summary of the news and events that have unfolded over the past few weeks in the case.

The story begins like this: on July 29th a doorman at 995 Fifth Avenue, near 81st Street, discovered a painting in the bushes in front of the building. The nineteenth-century painting, “Portrait of a Girl” by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, whose estimated value is $1.4 million, was apparently lost hours earlier by an intoxicated courier, James Carl Haggerty. Thinking the artwork belonged to one of the building’s residents, doorman Franklin Puentes stored it inside his locker after unsuccessful attempts to locate its owner. Puentes then went on a three-week vacation. When he returned, he heard the buzz about the missing painting and promptly turned it over to the police.

More on MOCA’s new director, Jeffrey Deitch, who brings his more business-oriented background to the Museum in LA: [Bloomberg] Deitch’s contract with the museum has certain safeguards against conflicts of interest that might arise from his foot in the business world– among the new rules, Deitch must notify the museum’s board of anything he adds to or sells from his collection. [LATimes]

Eli Broad and his Broad Art Foundation reveal that they are considering 3 different Westside locations on which to build and endow a museum for his art collection. The third site was recently revealed as being a ten-acre parcel on the campus of West LA College in Culver City. [LA Times]

Works by Picasso and Henri Rousseau have been stolen from a private villa in the South of France, marking the country’s second major art robbery in that week– (work by impressionist painter Edgar Degas was stolen from the Cantini Museum in Marseilles only days before). [FT]

A high-tech, futuristic design for a meeting hall in the Hirshhorn Museum at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is making headlines this week across the art community. The proposed “bubble” would constitute dimensions of 145 feet and swell out like a balloon from the primary structure, inflating during the months of May and October and collapsing for the duration of the year. Advocating for the design, Hirshhorn Museum Director Richard Koshalek insists that it will not detract from the museum’s most valuable possession: its art [Washington Post].

The Tate has been embracing the Christmas spirit this week with a series of headlining seasonal happenings. The Tate Christmas Tree 2009, “Weihnachtsbaum” designed by Tacita Dean, shocked critics by actually appearing “Christmassy”[Bloomberg] This weekend, Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall was taken over by Rob Pruitt‘s festive ‘Flea Market’ – originally held at Gavin Brown’s Passerby gallery in New York in the late 1990s, this event was programmed to coincide with the Tate Modern exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World, in which Pruitt also appears [POP Magazine]

Italian police have seized works of art belonging to Carlisto Tanzi – founder of the Italian firm Parmalat who collapsed in a massive fraud scandal in 2003. The 19 paintings and drawings, included works by Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh, and is estimated to be worth more than 100million euros [BBC News]

Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon that will appear in New York’s Madison Square Park in March 2010 via ArtInfo

Antony Gormley has announced plans to install 31 nude sculptures cast from his own body in and around Madison Square Park in Manhattan’s Flatiron District beginning March 26 [NY Times]

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-The Royal College of Art’s Secret 2009 event has 2,500 postcards for sale for £40, made by artists including Anish Kapoor, Grayson Perry and Yoko Ono. Though buyers don’t know who the artist is until after they buy. [Times UK]

-Penelope Curtis has been appointed director of Tate Britain, the first woman to hold a directorship at Tate. [Guardian]

-Tracey Emin opens a new exhibition in New York, that, while popular, comes nowhere near the levels of sales or attendance she normal receives in Britain. [NY Times]

An artist’s rendering of Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Cirkelbroen’ bridge to be built in Copenhagen via Artinfo

-Olafur Eliasson has designed a bridge to be completed by 2012 in Copenhagen’s harbor. Called ‘Brikelbroen,’ the bridge is comprised of five circles that take pedestrians on a winding path rather than straight across. [Artinfo]

To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week… (more…)

Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Trophy Wife,’ depicting Stephanie Seymour, currently going through a messy divorce from Peter Brant, who owns the piece

-Recent court filings in the divorce of Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour reveal disputes over nearly 50 works by Andy Warhol, as well as works by Richard Prince, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel, and a bust of Seymour made by Maurizio Cattelan [Vanity Fair]

-And in related, Udo Fritz-Hermann Brandhorst, an heir to Germany’s Henkel AG & Co. fortune, settled out of court a dispute with his former mistress over two works by Damien Hirst [Bloomberg]

-To benefit Performa 09, party designer Jennifer Rubell invites 600 guests to “Creation” held at X Initiative in Chelsea in New York, where 3,600 drinking glasses, a pyramid of unshelled peanuts and 2,000 pound hillock of honey-soaked ribs were among the excess of food being served (Performa 09/ Food for Thought) [The Moment]

-In related, To mark the start of Performa 09 MoMA invited Fischerspooner to stage a show (Performance Art Enters the Museum) [Artinfo]

-In related, At Haunch of Venison in New York Marina Abramovich, Leandro Erlich, Mickalene and Rob Wynn pair with NYC pastry chefs to create performances; cakes were served by topless models (Kreemart or Cream Art Performance at Haunch of Venison) [NY Art Beat]

-Bikes used by Lance Armstrong and with frames designed by contemporary artists fetch $1.3 million at auction in Sotheby’s, among them Damien Hirst’s sold for $500,000 (Armstrong’s Tour de France Bikes Fetch $1.3 Million at Auction) [Bloomberg]

To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week…(more…)

-Offered for the first time at public auction as part of Christie’s Old Masters sale, Raphael’s drawing “Head of a Muse”- a study for a figure in one of his Vatican frescoes, if it achieves its estimate £12-16million, will break the auction record for an old master drawing currently held by Michelangelo’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s works [Guardian UK]

-As art collectors become more cautious with their purchases, dealers at Frieze and FIAC fairs put works on reserve, among them $40 million Mondrian allegedly put on hold for Bernard Arnault [Bloomberg]

-Ms. Temkin, the chief curator of painting and sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, introduces unexpected changes, unframing certain paintings and subjecting the almost sacralized permanent collection to frequent renewal [The New York Times]

-Another collaboration between Mekanism and Olafur Eliasson results in a 13-ply deck 3d patterned skateboard with a mirror coating [aarting]
-In related, Olafur Eliasson commissions by the mayor of Copenhagen to design a bridge for the Danish capital; the artist shares his plans for a transparent bridge in a close vicinity to the water [The Art Newspaper]

– The survey carried out by the Art Fund, the UK’s independent art charity, shows that despite the substantial drop in public funding and investment income, a figure that proves to grow in the context of economic fall is the number of visits to museums [Art Knowledge News]

-In the midst of economic uncertainty, gallery Matthew Marks, which represents artists such as Jasper Johns, and Peter Fischli and David Weiss, plans on expansion with a new space on the West Coast [The New York Times]

To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week…(more…)

-Eric Fischl, Chie Fueki, Hilary Harkness, Will Cotton, Francesco Clemente, Peter Halley and Barbara Kruger are all a part of the long list of artists who have created, dedicated and portrayed Ron Warren in their works; Mary Boone’s assistant he has always played an understated yet influential role leading to a Mary Boone Gallery exhibition in his honor [The New York Times]

-The 2009 edition of the Power 100 by ArtReview is released with Hans Ulrich Obrist taking the first place and the list showcasing some changes in the influences and forces of the art world; the top ten include dealers and artists as Larry Gagosian, Francois Pinault, Eli Broad and Bruce Nauman [ArtReview]
-In related, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, the director of Serpentine Gallery, just voted to be the art world’s most powerful figure by the Power 100, gives an idea of how busy his week gets [The Independent]

-A $310 million collection of Mark Rothko paintings to be shown next spring in artist’s first Moscow solo exhibition at Dasha Zkukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture [Bloomberg]

To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week… (more…)

Jeff Koons’s giant rabbit at the Covent Garden in London via Hypebeast

A giant helium-filled Jeff Koons balloon made its UK debut on October 8th, the inflatable rabbit floated above central London, it will be displayed in Covent garden [The Independent]Coinciding with the Frieze fair, the 10th Turbine Hall commission launches, Baldessari’s retrospective opening the same day, Hayward Gallery presents Ed Ruscha, Turner Prize coming up and many other shows and openings, turn London into the center of attention [Guardian UK]
Frieze art fair excites not merely the International art scene, but also the social diaries of those who like to mingle with the rich and famous [Guardian UK] the contemporary art event even has installations to turn its visitors into the subjects of the artwork. [The Independent] Only displaying works by contemporary living artists, Frieze has been considered 1-dimensional in the past. Frieze helps London take over the art world in October [The Independent]- but not without competition, as FIAC, the Parisian fair, is to begin next week and may steal the battle as art collectors in today’s economic climate are forced to pick which fairs they will be attending [The Wall Street Journal]

A drawing sold at auction for $19,000 in the late 1990s is now attracting attention for its authorship, if by Leonardo Da Vinci, a theory that recent research strongly suggests, the work could be worth as much as $147 million [Bloomberg]
The Wapping Project in London, often compared to Tate Modern, is expanding with the opening of the Wapping Project Bankside- a new gallery reminiscent of a New York loft to feature film, video and photography almost “a stone’s throw” from Tate [The Moment]
The Whitney Museum of American Art’s plans for a second Renzo Piana location have advanced [The New York Times]

To stay apprised of most of the relevant art news for this past week …(more…)

Seattle Post-Intelligencer July 14, 2000 Most fans just laugh at how silly horror movies have become. Three of filmdom’s Wayans brothers decided to parlay their reaction into real laughs in “Scary Movie.” “It’s like `Airplane,’ ” says director Keenan Ivory Wayans. “Those guys knew that the disaster genre had been beaten to death.

“In horror, you’ve had the Jason series, the Freddy series, the `Scream’ series. This genre’s been played to death. . . . Same thing with `Don’t Be a Menace . . . ‘ You had `Boyz N the Hood,’ `South Central.’ ” The makers of “Scary Movie,” which had a huge opening last weekend, are no strangers to parody. Wayans targeted blaxploitation films when he wrote, directed and starred in the 1988 comedy “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.” He also acted in “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood,” the 1996 comedy written by and starring younger brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans. in our site horror movies 2010

“If you can find a genre’s that’s beaten itself to death and has sort of ingrained itself in popular culture, then it’s ripe for parody,” says Keenan, 42.

“Scary Movie” originated with Shawn, 29, and Marlon, who’ll turn 28 on July 23. “All they do all day is call me,” Keenan Wayans said in an interview. “They sit in the house, and they call me, like, four times a day, going, `Is there something in this?’ And I’ll go, `No, that’s ridiculous.’ “And then they called me and said, `Is there something in the idea of doing a parody of all these teen horror movies?’ And I said, `Yeah, there’s definitely something in that.’ ” The younger Wayanses got together with Buddy Johnson, who’d served as executive story editor on their WB sitcom “The Wayans Brothers,” and Phil Beauman, who co-wrote “Don’t Be a Menace” and wrote for “In Living Color,” the sketch-comedy show created by Keenan in the early ’90s, and wrote a script. in our site horror movies 2010

“And 10 drafts later . . . it got made,” says Keenan. (Two other writers who’d come up with a similar idea are also credited because Miramax bought their script to avoid legal hassles.) Inspiration for “Scary Movie” came from sitting in theaters, watching the recent horror films and seeing how ridiculous they were, Marlon Wayans says.

“The first `Scream’ was good,” he says. “Then they do the sequel and they do `I Know What You Still Did Last Summer’ and . . . `Urban Legend.’ ” “Scary Movie” goofs on all the usual suspects plus “The Usual Suspects,” “The Sixth Sense,” and “The Blair Witch Project.” Marlon and Shawn wrote parts for themselves, naturally, but neither of them is the main character.

While the “Scream” films satirize the horror genre, “they just heightened where you need to go in terms of showing comedy,” says Marlon Wayans. “They make commentary. We show.” “They had an actual, real killer,” says Shawn Wayans. “We had a killer, but we made fun of what was funny about the killer in those movies.” “Scary Movie” also follows in the footsteps of gross-out comedies such as “There’s Something About Mary” and “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.” “ `Something About Mary’ and `South Park’ kind of opened up the door,” says Marlon Wayans. “What you do is, you go, `OK, y’all like that? Well, wait till you get a load of this!’ “What we’re doing with the comedy, pushing the envelope like that, is making a parody statement itself. Like, `Look at all the crazy things that people are doing out there.’ And teens love it.” What the Wayanses love is working with each other. Even though they couldn’t come up with roles for brother Damon or sister Kim, “Scary Movie” was a family affair.

Marlon and Shawn expect to continue collaborating. “I like working with him,” says Marlon. “I slept in a bed with him for 16 years. I had his feet in my face my whole life, so this is my best friend.” As for having big brother direct, that was a no-brainer. “Keenan is great,” says Shawn. “I think he’s a genius, and we totally respect his work. He taught us everything we know about comedy and just about life, period.

“It’s kind of like he’s been the director of our life anyway.” Adds Marlon: “So to finally get paid to be bossed around, hey!”